Responsibility

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Wojtek wrote:
>At 01:56 PM 1/21/00 -0500, Brett Knowlton wrote:
>>First of all, there is a social dimension to people's actions.  For
>>example, can you really blame somebody who has been denied jobs and housing
>>for trying to steal some bread?  This is a loaded example, but many people
>>do have the deck stacked against them unfairly, and in such situations you
>>can't expect people to just accept their lot in life.  The system does lead
>>people to behave criminally, either by criminalizing things which shouldn't
>>be a crime, or by putting people in desperate conditions where they see no
>>other way out.
>
>Unbelievable!  And what planet did you come from?
>
>Get real, Brett.  Things like that may happen in schmaltzy readers for
>Sociology 101, but in real life people commit crimes because they want
>drugs or sex, to get even or to impress their peers (cf. Jack Katz,
>_Seductions of Crime_).  In so doing, they tend to vicimize their
>relatives, girfriends, and neighbors   - not the privileged ruling class.
>While the field is far from being level in this country - that is NOT a
>justification for victimizing other people who are in a similar
>social-economic situation.

May I humbly suggest that explanation is not the same as justification?
Feminists of most varieties, for instance, prefer social explanations to
the idea that individual men's personal irresponsibility explains gender
oppression; that does not mean they are justifying sexism by making
excuses, much less encouraging rape, murder of gay men & lesbians, etc.
Further, there is no evidence that emphasis on personal responsibility,
punitive approach in criminal justice, etc. make the lives of the poor any
safer from the fellow poor who turn to crime.  America incarcerates more
people than nations of comparable economic standings do.  Are Americans
less victimized by rapists, murderers, etc. than the French, the Swedish,
etc. do?

Yoshie

P.S.  The last I checked, you were a sociologist conducting an interesting
study on "social proximity orgs," not a prosecutor running for re-election.